Three Films Make a Post: Turning eighteen is going to be hell.

Book of Monsters (2018): Calling a horror comedy inoffensive is not exactly the highest praise, but then, Stewart Sparke’s female-centric film is one of those horror comedies that seems terribly nice and friendly even though quite a few people get ripped to shreds in it. It’s just that the characters we are supposed to like all make it, so there’s a certain lack of tension running through the whole affair. The jokes are all over the place, some are exactly the ones you’ll expect going in, some are not quite as obvious. Generally, this is a likeable film though, using its clearly not terribly high budget as well as possible to provide its audience with a good time, and while I never got terribly excited watching this, I did enjoy myself with it more than I didn’t.

Bumblebee (2018): Given that it is comedic, YA-ish, likeable and female-centric, Travis Knight’s entry into the Michael-Bay-haunted Transformers franchise feels a bit like the big sister of Book of Monsters. Just that big sis has all the money in the world to make things as slick and streamlined as possible, where its low budget sibling has to fight for every scene to come together on a simple technical level.

While it isn’t exactly deep, unlike the other Transformers films, this one actually understands little things like character arcs, human feelings, and even has thoughts about what growing up means for a young woman still mourning the loss of her father. Knight is able to put all this into a slick and mainstream compatible movie featuring a very charming Hailee Steinfeld that also includes fun robot fights, explosions and some really rather cool chase sequences. Basically, this is the first Transformers movie that actually seems to be made by people with a degree of respect for their audience and their characters, who also happen to be really good craftsmen. It’s not a deep exploration of grief and loss, obviously, but it is a really entertaining film that’s not utterly brain dead in a franchise known for the exact opposite. Also, the robots have different colours.

Cold Skin (2017): Xavier Gens’s adaptation of Albert Sánchez Piñol’s novel must be an excellent one, seeing as it left me with pretty much the same feelings as the book did, the impression of having watched/read a very competently and eloquently realized story that never quite gets around to saying as much of interest about the human condition, colonialism or just the human heart as it seems to set out to. Curiously enough, for something taking place in 1914, the film (as the book) seems to be held back by too great a love for the narrative and philosophical habits of 19th (instead of 20th) century fiction, never really reaching the point where it should take a good long look at its own assumptions about how to speak about the things it is clearly most interested in.


As a horror adventure story, it is rather convincing, though, even though its fish people design is disappointingly derivative and conservative. It mostly disappoints because it seems so desperate to be something more.

Three Films Make A Post: WARNING: If you've ever been hypnotized, do not come alone!

Devil in the Dark (2017): Tim Brown’s film concerns two estranged brothers trying to rebuild bridges by going on a camping trip in an area that has a dark connection to something strange that happened to the younger brother when they were children. Something monstrous has been calling to them.

This is one of these perfectly decent, competently realized horror films that just never manage to truly capture anything dark, interesting, or insightful, plodding along well enough through its running time without ever hitting the right spot that would turn the film exciting in any way, shape or form. In this particular case, I’d argue this would have been a better film if it had started from where it stops and went onwards from there (probably with strategic flashbacks), because the last minute or so actually does manage to capture the imagination.

The Creature Below (2016): This British Lovecraftian indie is not as slick as Devil in the Dark but felt much more interesting than the US film. While the story isn’t particularly original when you know your Lovecraft pastiches, there aren’t terribly many long-form films going that way. Director Stewart Sparke manages to tell a tale of cosmic horror on a personal scale, trusting in a good performance of lead Anna Dawson to portray her character’s slow descent into properly Lovecraftian madness. There’s some awkwardness with a not exactly ideal sound mix, the special effects aren’t always great (unless in those moments when they absolutely are), and the verbatim quotes from HPL in the dialogue don’t really work, but these aren’t exactly show stoppers in indie horror of the really independent sort. Otherwise, the film is atmospheric and flows well and even ends on a high note in one of its best shot scenes. Okay, and on iffy CGI, but I didn’t find myself caring about that at all.

House of Wax (1953): André de Toth’s film is probably the best wax figure cabinet horror movie ever made (which is actually a surprisingly strong field as sub-sub-genres go), featuring as it does silly 3D gimmicks, what is one of the founding – and thoroughly great - performances of Vincent Price’s career as a horror actor (I do count his radio performances, nit pickers), an early larger – and pleasantly creepy - outing for Charles Bronson before he took that name, comic relief that is often not terribly odious, a wrily presented sense of the macabre, and a use of colour in a period set horror film that to me seems to prefigure things like Corman’s Poe cycle or the part of the Italian gothics that were shot in colour.

De Toth being de Toth, there’s also quite a bit of barely suppressed subtext concerning eroticism and male obsession with an imaginary ideal (potentially sublimated into art) that really shouldn’t work with the gimmicky nature of the kind of cinema that uses ping pong balls swirling at the camera to really prove its 3D merits but does.